[T60P] more performance from firegl v5250 for games ?

[kpoman]

Hi,
I own a T60P and would like to have better performance on games with my graphic board. I heard this gpu is the same as the x1700, but with different bios. I wonder then if there are some modded drivers or whatever to perform better.
Setting on CCC the profile of OpenGL Game gave me 3500 points on 3DMark 2005. I suppose it could be much better than this !
If someone has an idea on which drivers/mods_/bios upgrade could be done to enhance its speed ?
Thanks

[TPA]

Not much to be found for the v5250 yet. I've read a few posts about a person or two who claimed to have soft modded to x1700, but are still having some issues. I also have a t60p with the v5250 and am not really expecting this to happen, at least not anytime soon.

[Pascal_TTH]

FireGL V5200 is the same as Mobility Radeon X1600. In T60p, core runs at 400 MHz and memory at 320 MHz. 3500 is a normal score. Mine reach the same. There is no magic driver to speed it up.

Specifications of FireGL V5250 are not clear. It search a lot about it to know if it have different frequency but I found nothing. ATI website : http://ati.amd.com/developer/vendorid.html

ATI MOBILITY FireGL V5200
M56GL
71C4

ATI MOBILITY FireGL V5250
M56GL
71D4

ATI Mobility Radeon X1600
M56
71C5

ATI Mobility Radeon X1700
M56
71D5

ATI Mobility Radeon X1700
M56
71DE

FireGL and Mobility Radeon have same code name M56(GL), only chip ID change so they are very close.

TPA, can you run 3D Mark 2005 with you FireGL V5250 ? Have you already check the frequency with some software (Everest can do it) ?

[kpoman]

Thanks for your replyu. I also have read some stuff on the internet. Some people tricking the CCC driver/software, putting x1700 instead of firegl on some .inf file havent got any good result.
Some other people are going to try burning a new Bios into the card, i.e. the x1700 bios. I hope to hear good news from that.
Anyway if someone can check how to set the best parameters or whatever for opengl and gaming ?

[Pascal_TTH]

I do not believe it because if you look carefully the DLL of the driver, the D3D part for FireGL is the same then regular Radeon. Only open gl files (Atioglgl.dll and atioglxx.dll) are differents. Drivers like Omega or other modded only change some settings from the control panel ie : lowering texture quality from high to balanced.

Today, I read all posts about FireGL V5200 and V5250 beacause I wanted to know the differences. No one here ever reach more then 3550 in 3D Mark 2005. The only way to have higher score is overclocking... I try Omega driver, last IBM driver and modded catalyst 7.6 with .net modder, I always got 3550.

You can force installation of *any* Mobility Radeon X1x00 driver. You will have Mobility Radeon X1700 in you display tab and in the device manager but if your hardaware is FireGL V5200, it will never change into Mobility Radeon X1700.

BTW, FireGL V5250 clock is 430 MHz and FireGL V5200 clock is 400 MHz. Memory clock is 324 MHz in both case and this is a bottleneck so performances stay the same. Also, laptop manufacturer can choose frequency for their GPU and memory. So all laptops with Mobility Radeon X1600 (or any other graphic) did not run at the same freq.

[TPA]

TPA, can you run 3D Mark 2005 with you FireGL V5250 ? Have you already check the frequency with some software (Everest can do it) ?

3842

[Pascal_TTH]

Thank you TPA.

Mobility FireGL V5250 is about 7% faster then FireGL V5250. Last question, witch CPU have your T60p ?

[kpoman]

Mine is Core 2 Duo T7200 2GHz with 2GB Ram.
Your score seems better than mine, but much lower than of the Radeon X1700...

ps: here is an interesting post to porting bios to a x1700 one.

If someone has time and wish to try this:

http://www.driverheaven.net/driverheave ... 00-xp.html

[tebore]

Changing it over to an X1700 isn't worth while. The video card can only be so powerful. You'll gain 10% max and on a gain where the card shows it's age 10% is just going to be 1 FPS.

[Pascal_TTH]

Mine is Core 2 Duo T7200 2GHz with 2GB Ram.
Your score seems better than mine, but much lower than of the Radeon X1700...

ps: here is an interesting post to porting bios to a x1700 one.

If someone has time and wish to try this:

http://www.driverheaven.net/driverheave ... 00-xp.html

This thopic only tells how change what will be displayed in the device manger or in the display tabs.

Replace that line with:
"ATI MOBILITY RADEON X1700 " = ati2mtag_M56, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_71D4

Make sure there are 3 spaces between the X1700 and the "

You could even rename the card in X1900, it will change nothing. After, the related topic at techpowerup is for desktop graphic card where flashing software can access the bios. I will never try hazardous update with a 2000 $ laptop. Laptop bios are far more specifics then AGP or PIC-Express desktop cards.

It's far easier to do a gentle overclock your Thinkpad +10% for GPU and momory. Also, do not forget that in some laptops, Mobility Radeon X1600 runs at 418 MHz with 468 MHz DDR2 (this is for an Alienware Area-51 m5500 and it can be higher in other notebooks) witch is far higher then the FireGL V5200 (400/324 MHz).